Soviets Call U.N. Act ‘Historic’ and Urge Iraq to Back Down : Sanctions: Shevardnadze exhorts Baghdad to ‘de-escalate the crisis’ before force is employed to implement an embargo on shipping.

Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze hailed Saturday’s U.N. Security Council decision authorizing the use of military force to uphold international sanctions against Iraq as a “historic” step toward a safer world, but he urged Baghdad to back down so that it will never be implemented.

“We hope that the Iraqi leadership will draw the proper conclusions and take measures to de-escalate the crisis,” Shevardnadze said, stressing that lines of communication between Moscow and its former ally were still open. “The Soviet Union wishes only good for the Iraqi people and is ready to further promote a peaceful settlement of the crisis.”

Earlier in the day, the Soviet Union joined the United States and 11 other members of the U.N. Security Council in calling for the use of necessary force by the international naval armada now in the Persian Gulf region to implement a U.N. embargo on shipping to and from Iraq.

Moscow had previously balked at such a measure, and Shevardnadze’s comments, distributed by the Tass news agency, were evidently intended to explain the shift in official thinking and stress that the Soviet Union hopes that Security Council Resolution 665 will never have to go into effect.

Shevardnadze said his country had sought all along “to avoid the further use of force in the Persian Gulf region,” but that the new U.N. measure was “aimed at preventing a more dangerous development of events,” apparently meaning a full-blown military conflict between Iraq and the U.S. and other international forces now in the area.

The government of President Saddam Hussein, Shevardnadze said, should take into account the “unanimous” resolve shown by the Security Council and obey its previous resolutions, including demands for Iraq’s unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait and the liberation of thousands of foreigners now held captive in Iraq and occupied Kuwait.

Soviet U.N. envoy Valentin V. Lozinsky, whose initial objections had delayed negotiations on the draft of Resolution 665, told reporters in New York that the possibility of his country’s participation in the international naval force is now under consideration in Moscow.

Shevardnadze made no mention of Soviet intentions, but President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, receiving French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, said the session would be “an opportunity to jointly think over the situation, to determine joint or parallel moves.”

Dumas told a news conference afterward that the Kremlin wants the embargo against Iraq to be firmly applied. Gorbachev, he said, “did not exclude measures of coercion against Iraq.”

No further details were immediately available. France, like the United States and several other Western countries, has sent warships to the Persian Gulf. Soviet spokesmen previously said their country had dispatched two vessels, but ruled out using them to intercept Iraq ships.

Gorbachev on Friday sent an urgent message to Saddam Hussein warning him that if he continued to flout U.N. resolutions calling for an end to the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and detention of foreigners, “extra measures” would by approved by the United Nations.

Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait has fostered unprecedented cooperation between the superpowers to end an international crisis, with both the United States and Soviet Union, long Baghdad’s No. 1 weapons source, calling for an international arms embargo of Iraq.

Shevardnadze said the fact that the Security Council resolution was backed by all five permanent members--the superpowers plus Britain, France and China--was “historic and without prior example,” and a “unique chance for forming effective mechanisms of protecting law and justice in international relations.”

The Soviet vote in the Security Council was not without risk. About 8,000 Soviet nationals are still in Iraq, and officials in Moscow have said that the first planeload of 260 women and children is to fly home from Baghdad today. Those plans, however, were announced before Saturday’s predawn vote at U.N. headquarters.